


another yellow ending.

by starryeyedgiant



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Heavily implied misgendering, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post Yellow Ending (We Know the Devil), Transmisogyny, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22474000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryeyedgiant/pseuds/starryeyedgiant
Summary: "If I have to be in my old body again. I'll die."a vent fic about yellow endings and mundane fears. straight from the heart.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	another yellow ending.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry for writing this and i should note from the start that it doesn't really have a happy ending, although i tried. please take care of yourself when reading, and mind the warnings.
> 
> thanks.

It's strange how a name becomes like a dagger in the base of your skull.

Two weeks back from camp, Venus tries to answer to it like normal, but #e can't. Not with a smile, not even with the shaky nervous smile #e was always so good at managing. The name sounds different now. Even the surname sounds different. People say it differently: teachers in the classrooms, strangers in the hallways, ##s parents at home.

Venus thinks maybe they're all as uncomfortable with it as #e is. Knowing what they do about Venus, it has to be. That's why, sometimes, instead of saying that name, they come up with new names to use: nicknames and titles pulled from a lexicon of specialised insults. Venus knows those words individually, separately--knows all their meanings far better than #e's ever known about concepts like "misgendering" or "slurs".

It was hard, before. You shouldn't pretend it was easy. The constant barrage deadened Venus' senses--#e felt half-alive, half-aware. The entire world moved around ##m like a strange apparition; it was a constant heat daze, a perpetual slump. But it is so much worse when the world comes into focus. When it sees ##m. When #e has to see it.

It's like being woken from a delirium. All those vague hopes, those disconnected observations, those feelings for other people, they just... evaporate, the moment Venus sees the recognition in someone else's eyes. That horrible look. That sword of judgement. It severs Venus. It cuts the world into focus. It brings time down to a crawl, like blood being slowly drawn.

And so Venus does not speak. And no one speaks to ##m.

Neptune and Jupiter have done Venus the favour of avoiding ##m like the plague #e is. They're not in most of the same classes any more--Venus has fewer and fewer classes together with anyone, more and more quiet one-to-one lessons behind closed doors that ##s parents pay out of their noses for. The one time they do have to sit beside each other, Neptune tries to catch Venus' eyes; but Venus' eyes are dead. They're closed doors. The safest they can be.

She wanted ##m to toughen up, right? This is how you do it.

(Or was that someone else?)

The point is that it was different when Venus first woke up, after that horrible moment, that failed moment. She was slung over that branch like a piece of carrion; she thrashed and moaned in pain, too weak to make any sound. Jupiter was holding Neptune's hand, but they quickly snatched away from each other when they saw that Venus' wide, unguarded eyes had opened, and she was awake.

Awful as it was, that was the last moment she ever had with them; the last moment she had at all.

#e will be moving away soon. This is a fact. It's not something you can see, not something you have to see. It's something you feel, like a leaden weight, like parents talking quietly, but not too quietly, about how they are dutiful immigrants, hard workers, good role models, and they simply need to find a better neighbourhood. There's a private therapist up north, who says he has methods that can help. Surely their oldest ##n will soon be back on the right track.

It's the kind of weight that pounds, pounds, pounds. It feels a little silly to be so affected by it, though. After all, Venus has no one to say goodbye to.

(That secret she saw, in the last day of summer camp, between Jupiter and Neptune. Those hands tightly clasped. She knows they want to be the ones who survived. She hopes they will be.

Once she's gone.)

Sometimes, Venus wanders out into the parking lot and stares into the sun like #e's a child throwing a strange tantrum that no one will ever see. #e will damage ##s vision, but even so, #e can't unknow what #e knows. It is somehow worse, knowing it about ###self. Being able to make sense, at last, of the mismatch--the silent urges and guilty yearnings, the things imagined that no one else could imagine. Having seen the other side of the devil, just once and never again.

Because it means #e deserves this. And there is nothing #e can do.

All #e wants is to go back. To hide, hide, hide even more, until #e can't be seen at all. Until the world is a blanket of darkness cloaking ##m in ignorant warmth forever. Backwards into the void of nonexistence, into the before of creation--maybe that's the only way god will have ##m. But it's impossible. Innocence is impossible. Baptism in water, baptism in prayer, none of it has ever worked. There is no second birth for Venus.

Sin is real for everyone. But forgiveness is only for a few.

Reality is sharp and painful and discontinuous, cut up by daggers. At a hair-trigger Venus is jumping back into that awful moment, into how #e always secretly hoped the radios wouldn't hurt, like they said--how #e hoped they would only scourge and press and scrape the evil out of her. But Jupiter broke her bones and Neptune gouged out her eyes, and it took minutes upon minutes to get through all of her and leave her empty husk strung out on the tree branch. And she had known in that terrible moment that she would never ever be whole again. They took something out of her that she'd allowed to come to the surface. And they didn't get all of it, but there's hardly anything left.

Venus is empty now. Something's definitely missing from ##m--even more than before.

#e is getting into a van. There isn't much space among all the luggage. People are talking about ##m as they load in the rest of it, and ##s throat is choked by blades. A pincushion, inanimate.

But once the car starts it's too loud for conversation. The journey will be hours long, away from the city and through the hills. The sun will shine endlessly down; there will be no clouds.

Venus feels the door shut and knows #e is really disappearing. That whatever gets out of the car at the end of the trip will be something different.

Maybe it'll even be different enough to survive, where #e could not.

#e watches the road curve and flatten outside the window, and feels faintly like crying, but no tears form.

\---

The car radio goes wonky. Venus doesn't notice until it's almost failing. God's voice is unintelligible, a nearly constant muttering in the static, like wind buffeting ##s ears.

There's arguing in the front seat. Dad slams a fist down on the car horn; the noise terrifies Venus awake. No radio means no GPS, no compass, nothing. They're stranded on the road, far away from the nearest signal. They don't know where to turn at the crossroads.

He turns in his seat. Venus winces, already looking away. ##s expression just makes both of ##s parents more cross than they already were.

"Get out. Help me fix this thing. You can do that, right?"

So they swap places. The sun is hot even though it's not supposed to be summer any more. Venus feels dizzy.

It takes a few tries, but #e gets the right screwdriver in the right socket. The car radio's innards are complex, way more than anything #e's ever learned about. #e doesn't remember why #e's supposed to be able to do this.

Venus tunes the radio.

And, of course, she doesn't do it right. Her fingers fumble. And the devil answers, as neat as can be.

_"Here, at an unmarked crossroads. Here, where god is a little distant. Something could happen here."_

The devil's voice is like tantalising smoke and suffocating honey. Venus pauses with tweezers wrapped around the wire and she hears a question from behind her.

"I-I'm just trying to find the right frequency," #e stammers. But the tools don't move in ##s hand.

_"But you're trapped. And you're all alone. And I'm so sorry about what happened. I'm so sorry I couldn't help. Now you're even more hurt than you were before."_

There is a hand on ##s shoulder. A demand. Dad wants to know what's going on, or maybe he just wants to snatch the tools out of Venus' hand.

_"I still have a promise, though. One I can keep._

_"That there is a way from your world into my world._

_"And if you come to me, no one will be able to follow."_

Venus elbows behind her, blindly. She pulls and kicks the car door open and yanks the lock button down as she stumbles out. She slams it shut and that saves her precious seconds, the locks on the old van are stubborn, while she runs out, out, down the second, wider road that crosses the one she was on before. Towards the crest of the next hill.

Halfway there she runs out of breath and nearly keels over. She can hear the footsteps behind her as she pants and silently curses the weight of her body and wishes there were any vestige of strength left in her. She's so dizzy.

She doesn't have enough strength to take a single step. All she can do is stand, and look up one last time. The sun is up there, hot and horrible.

And just beside it, there's another light. Tiny and pale and invisible against the daylight glare.

Venus reaches up.

\---

They take her old body. They drag it back to the car, and maybe from there they get it to the next city. Maybe one day Jupiter or Neptune track down where it's gone, and they visit, and they see it lying under a headstone or standing still behind a counter in a shopping mall, going by the wrong name, unable to recognise them at all.

Venus isn't there, though. She's safe, somewhere far away.

And this time, she isn't ever coming back.

**Author's Note:**

> haha, this sucks. remember Leelah Alcorn? that sucked too.
> 
> it's selfish, but i have this wish that people would remember this is often how we die.
> 
> if you read this all the way to the end, thanks again.


End file.
